NASA CIO Uses Tricks Rather Than Direction
NASA using carrot, not stick in push for shared services, Federal News Services
“NASA isn’t forcing its centers to move to IT shared services. Instead, Larry Sweet, NASA’s chief information officer, is trying to make it so attractive that the 18 centers and facilities can’t resist the offer. “I’ve initiated a program called enterprise first. That’s where we focus first and foremost on our enterprise services, so I want NASA users to first consider the I3P program and consider the services that we offer there. Then we have a shared services center,” Sweet said. “I’m a believer in using shared services for a lot of reasons. One is they can offer a more affordable service to NASA, generally speaking. I want to try to get us up to that 80 percent to 90 percent use of commodity-based IT that is offered through these enterprise services and shared service center.”
Keith’s note: This may be the pragmatic thing to do given the dysfunctional way NASA runs itself – but its also a pretty pathetic admission i.e. that NASA Headquarters cannot direct its field centers to do basic managerial and operational tasks and that they have to trick them into complying instead.
– OIG Dings NASA on IT Security – Again, earlier post
– GAO Cites NASA Technology Access Issues, earlier post
– Hearing (Tries to) Focus On NASA Security Issues, earlier post
– OIG: NASA Has No Idea How Many Portable Devices It Has, earlier post
– NASA Bring Your Own Device Update, earlier post
– Do You Really Trust NASA Not to Ruin Your Mobile Device?, earlier post
– NASA OIG IT Report Highlights Governance Problems, earlier post
The idea that “Shared services” save money is a mostly a myth. What actually happens is that quality goes down significantly, indirect costs associated with having to deal with the poor quality go up, and direct costs, if they go down at all, go down far less than the indirect costs go up.
I don’t understand why NASA should follow corporate models when they’ve so often failed. I’ve worked at a couple of places where IT went from a local service to a shared service model. Both places it went to heck in a handbasket. Once it got centralized, the IT people determined what you could have, when you could have it, and on what terms. You paid what they charged. When costs had to be cut, you still paid what they charged and put up with even further reductions in service.
I agree with the other comments. Years ago each contractor and center had in-house IT support. This appears to have been more cost effective than centralized services, particularly for an R&D organization that (ideally) uses computers for engineering and science. Making ALL centralized IT services optional at the department or user level, including procurement of PC hardware, would be a good way to find out what services really make sense to share.